Towards Small Business Excellence: The Role of Talent Management, Organizational Culture and Synergized Innovative Climate, Synergized Innovative Climate

This paper provides a theoretical rationale for the applicability of talent management in SMEs context. Specifically, the study offers a framework examining the effect of talent management on organizational performance mediated by a synergized innovative climate and moderated by organizational culture. The study employs a broad cross-sectional sample of 295 owners of small and medium-sized family businesses engaged in culinary, printing, fashion, and handicrafts in Central Java Province, Indonesia. Data were analyzed quantitatively using Structural Equation Model. The results of the analysis showed that four out of five hypotheses were supported. Only the first hypothesis stating that talent management positively influences organizational performance was not supported. This study serves as a foundation for future talent management research, particularly those aimed at uncovering the factors that influence talent management's unique position in organizational outcomes.

Towards Small Business Excellence: The Role of Talent Management, Organizational Culture and Synergized Innovative Climate, Synergized Innovative Climate

This paper provides a theoretical rationale for the applicability of talent management in SMEs context. Specifically, the study offers a framework examining the effect of talent management on organizational performance mediated by a synergized innovative climate and moderated by organizational culture. The study employs a broad cross-sectional sample of 295 owners of small and medium-sized family businesses engaged in culinary, printing, fashion, and handicrafts in Central Java Province, Indonesia. Data were analyzed quantitatively using Structural Equation Model. The results of the analysis showed that four out of five hypotheses were supported. Only the first hypothesis stating that talent management positively influences organizational performance was not supported. This study serves as a foundation for future talent management research, particularly those aimed at uncovering the factors that influence talent management's unique position in organizational outcomes.

Innovation - an Important Condition for the Formation of a Competitive Economy

One of the most important conditions for the development of the Georgian economy and its successful integration into the world economic space is to focus on the development of innovations and, as a result, to form a competitive economy. At present, the innovative climate in Georgia is not favorable for the formation of a competitive economy. There is no unified innovative state policy, weak innovation infrastructure, limited innovation market and normal economic stimulus to manage these processes. Financial difficulties, lack of proper guarantees in the industrial field and difficulties in creating modern and especially in high-tech production area, unstable pace of development further reduced the interest in innovative activities and led to its gradual decline. As a result, Georgia ranks 74th place among 141 countries in the Competitiveness Index. In the modern global space, the development of innovative potential is an important condition for the formation of a competitive economy of the country. In the article we focused on some of the problems of innovative development and its solution. The competitiveness potential of the country is analyzed, the role of the state in the formation of a competitive economy through the development of innovations is given.

Innovative Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practices in the Smallholder Farming System of South Africa

Climate change is easily the most serious human and environmental crisis of the present generation. While awareness of the existence and consequences of climate change is becoming widespread, the specific effects on agriculture and the extent to which innovative climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices are being adopted remain unclear. This study was conducted in three local municipalities of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa to determine the patterns of smallholder choice of alternative climate-smart agricultural practices and the factors affecting such choices. It was particularly crucial to investigate why adaptation of CSA practices continues to be lower than expectation despite awareness of their benefits, thus highlighting the social and cultural limits to adaptation to climate change. A total of 210 households were enumerated on the basis of their involvement in crop and livestock farming. The data were analyzed by means of multinomial logistic model, which was applied separately to individual local municipality data sets and a combined provincial data set, and it was revealed that most farmers were not being sufficiently motivated to move from established practices to adopt new CSA practices. The most influential factors in the decision process as to what CSA practice to adopt were primary occupation, farming system type, household size, age and membership of farmer groups. It seemed that asset fixity constrained farmers to continue with existing practices rather than shift to new, more profitable practices, a situation that can be resolved by external intervention by government agencies and/or other entities. Awareness creation targeting remote rural areas as well as institutions to ease farmers’ access to credit and information will contribute to higher adoption rates, which are likely to lead to enhanced food security and standard of living for rural dwellers as their agricultural production and productivity improve.

Quality Assessment in Co-developing Climate Services in Norway and the Netherlands

Climate services, and research on climate services, have mutually developed over the past 20 years, with quality assessment a central issue for orienting both practitioners and researchers. However, quality assessment is becoming more complex as the field evolves, the range and types of climate services expands, and there is an increasing appeal to co-production of climate services. Scholars describe climate services as emerging from complex knowledge systems, where information moves through institutions and actors attribute various qualities to these services. Seeing climate services' qualities as derived from and activated in knowledge systems, we argue for comprehensive assessment conducted with an extended peer community of actors from the system; co-evaluation. Drawing inspiration from Knowledge Quality Assessment and post-normal science traditions, we develop the Co-QA assessment framework; a checklist-based framework for the co-creation of criteria to assess the quality of climate services. The Co-QA framework is a deliberation support tool for critical dialogue on the quality of climate services within a co-construction collective. It provides a novel, structured, and comprehensive way to engage an extended peer community in the process of quality assessment of climate services. We demonstrate how we tested the Co-QA—through interviews, focus groups and desktop research—in two co-production processes of innovative climate services; an ex post evaluation of the “Klimathon” in Bergen, Norway, and an ex ante evaluation for designing place-based climate services in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. These cases reveal the challenges of assessing climate services in complex knowledge systems, where many concerns cannot be captured in straight-forward metrics. And they show the utility of the Co-QA in facilitating co-evaluation.

Understanding Public Acceptance of a Multifunctional Water Plaza: A Case Study

Climate change enhances pluvial flood risk in many cities all over the world, especially in densely populated urban areas with high impervious surfaces that need to adapt to heavy precipitation. For this purpose, multifunctional stormwater infrastructures such as water plazas appear promising as there is a high competition for open space in most urban areas. Yet, to date only very few water plazas have been realized with at least one implementation hampered by a lack of public acceptance. In this study, semi-structured interviews are used to investigate how plans to build a water plaza in the city of Cologne are perceived by local residents. Factors crucial to public acceptance are identified. Experience with flooding, knowledge of the planned construction and awareness of benefits turned out to be important for acceptance, whereas social and personal norms were less relevant. The identified factors led to finding recommendations to promote public acceptance of innovative climate adaptation measures like water plazas.